Tempus
by a sea of sound
Summary: Because everyone has a story. —4. bw mom
1. blue

**All of these are based off of Joseph Gordon-Levitt's _Tiny Book of Tiny Stories 2_. They're beautiful, little thought-provoking passages accompanied with pictures. They're not actually written/drawn by JGL, though, just people who've submitted stuff to his recording company.**

**I don't own Pokémon or _The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories_.**

* * *

It's cold.

And dank. Horribly dank.

When they land, someone hands her a mask; it, too, is cold, like it's made of a mixture of ice and steel. The climate here is different than the one back at the home she can barely remember. It scares her that the only think she can think of is A-B-C, 1-2-3 to keep herself calm.

A person begins to bark orders. Blue doesn't know what to do except copy the actions of a few older kids and fall into place beside them in a line. Out of her periphery she notices a small child who couldn't have been more than two years old, with red hair the color of...fire, was it? Inwardly, she is relieved that she remembers that much.

All of a sudden, something soft and round is shoved into her arms. Surprise is the only emotion she can register when the thing unexpectedly starts moving.

_A is for Abra..._

_B is for Bulbasaur..._

_C is for Charmander..._

"Jiggly?" the thing says quietly, looking up at her with big round eyes. Blue stares back in confusion, turning to the older children for guidance. To her right is a gangly...person (she can't tell) with purple hair. They have what appears to be a couple of eggs in a pile of grass, yet the eggs have _faces_. Blue is astounded by that much, as the person bends down to feed it.

Turning her attention back to the Pokémon in her arms, she tentatively pats its head. It smiles a tiny, secluded smile, as if unsure whether to trust her or not.

Blue doesn't know what caused the heaviness in her heart to lighten ever so slightly, but she welcomes it with a masked grin.


	2. ghetsis

How could he let this happen?

All of the work he'd done, all of it gone and wasted for the glory of yet _another _insolent child, another nobody who probably wouldn't know what effort was even if it smacked them in the face. And yet, to think that this boy that he'd cultivated and manipulated over the years had turned against even him, his _father_ for Arceus' sake.

(But he never cared for Arceus' sake anyway, only his own.)

Ghetsis was done. He refused to let himself feel defeated; no, he would never surrender to the pleas of this nonhuman scum. How dare he have the audacity to refer to him as 'Father'? How dare he preach the very thing that he'd taught him to oppose? _How dare he allow him to fail?_

He felt the urge to slap the boy senseless. No. He felt the impulse to destroy, to kill, to break something down so much so that it cannot be put back together again.

_N_. What a fool. Even his name wasn't human; it was simply a nondescript letter with no meaning at all. He had simply been a machine, a catalyst for Ghetsis' previous plans.

But the girl, she was the foil. Both of them, actually. The first girl he'd lost to, he had seen sense in her; she, at least, was strong and willful. The second girl, however, was but a child. All of her features soft, all of them dainty and as fragile as a newborn human. So delicate. And oh so _breakable_. Ghetsis felt a familiar itch in his hands that prompted him to tear down her neck and break it like she broke his plans, but before he could act on it, his faithful shadow servants came to stop him, something they had never done before.

He hissed and screamed at them to let him go, watching both the human and the nonhuman's eyes widen. The nonhuman turned to the girl and mumbled something discreet, and she simply stared at him with an expression that made Ghetsis want to snap every single bone in her body, not stopping even when she cried for mercy.

The Shadow Triad, he learned, had always been relentless.

But the one thing Ghetsis wanted more than anything in that moment, they denied him.


	3. volkner, candice

They meet when they're both training to become Gym Leaders.

Her name is Candice ("Like ice except pronounced like _iss_!") and she trains Ice-types. Volkner is not the least be surprised, despite everyone else's claims that she's such a nice break from all of the distant and cool Ice-type trainers. Rather, she's bubbly and a bit fiery, very much unlike the Snorunt she keeps at her side.

She puts up a good fight against his Luxio, which mildly shocks him because all of the other kids back home didn't stand a chance. Even then, he refuses to believe that she's anything more than what he sees her as, a two-dimensional happy-go-lucky girl. When she loses, she doesn't appear to have really _lost_. Well, she doesn't lose that dumb grin of hers.

No one at school actually stood a chance against his fierce team of Electric-types (except for Candice, but that doesn't make him sound as impressive as he likes). Roark remained at the bottom, and despite his grumbling, he took his title as the first gym leader in the Sinnoh league in stride. Gardenia's Pokémon didn't pack much of a punch, and neither did that foreign woman's who looked a bit too old to be going to school.

Everyone else was forgettable.

Everyone except Candice.

("Always the exception."

"Haha! Thanks. Congrats, by the way. The odds never were in my favor against you, huh?"

"I guess. And congrats to you too. Seventh's a good position."

"But not as good as eighth! Here, consider this a graduation present!")

And, standing on her toes, she plants her lips on his cheek. A blush grows starting from that one spot, steadily spreading its roots to the rest of his nerve endings and setting him on fire.


	4. bw mom

Being a mother is hard.

Being the mother of a wayward daughter is even harder. But Marian White doesn't let that bother her. She's grown used to the silence that fills her small house in Nuvema Town, and when the silence becomes unbearable, she'll phone Hilbert. Marian could always count on Hilbert to be her constant, but she could also count on Hilda to be her fluctuation.

Hilda doesn't call, nor does she make any effort to contact anyone. Marian is not the least bit surprised, nor is she the least bit unhurt. No news is good news they say. Marian's stopped believing that when she hasn't seen her daughter in two years.

The door opens.

"Welcome home, dear. Did you find that friend you were looking for? Wasn't his name something like N?"

She waits for the curt response, but instead she gets silence. That's acceptable. Hilda doesn't have to talk if she doesn't want to.

However, when Marian whirls around in her seat, in front of her is an unfamiliar girl. A girl who reminds her so much of her Hilda she wonders if her bastard of a husband had had another child. The girl's eyes go wide, and they're so blue Marian fears she'll drown in them like she'd drowned in her daughter's.

Upon closer inspection, she really doesn't look too much like Hilda. Her features are softer, more innocent and unperturbed by cynicism. Hilda had always seemed as though she had so much baggage and responsibility in this world, even at a young age.

"I-I'm sorry," Marian stutters, struggling to keep herself in one piece.

"Oh! No, I'm sorry! Was I interrupting something?" the girl asks, her hand on the doorknob. Her voice holds a certain alacrity; Marian vaguely wonders why she thought this child resembled her insouciant daughter.

"No, it's all right. By any chance, did your mother work in a Poké Center in Nimbasa? Or was it Mistralton..."

"Yeah she did! But that was before she had me." She smiles, her innocent face lighting up. "I'm Rosa! You're Champion Hilda and Hilbert's mom, right?"

Marian sits up in her seat at the mention of her children; perhaps this girl knows something? "Yes, I am. I don't mean to impose, but have you heard anything about my daughter? I've heard you also brought down Team Plasma..." she trails off. She knows it sounds a bit suspicious that she isn't aware of the whereabouts of her own child, but no one is, really.

Rosa's face falls a bit, and along with it Marian's hope.

* * *

**Hmmmmm this one's a bit longer than the others, which are all about 300 words.**

**In other news, this chapter was supposed to go before the Senirasu one, but I accidentally deleted it :O me and my clumsiness. Blargh**


End file.
